CBF Featured in Social Innovations Journal

The CBF is proud to be featured in the Social Innovations Journal’s most recent edition, Chicago’s Social Innovations, Social Enterprises, and Public Private Partnerships. We are humbled to be included among the many other innovative projects and programs, which together demonstrate how Chicago is a leading force in the international social impact and social policy movement. A summary of and link to the CBF article is below.

Disrupting Justice

Thousands of Illinoisans every week encounter legal problems that can have a huge impact on their health, stability, and economic wellbeing. Many can afford to pay something for legal assistance but too often are not getting the necessary legal help from lawyers due to a failure in the market for legal services for middle-income individuals and small businesses. In 2011, The Chicago Bar Foundation (CBF) recognized this broken market and developed an innovative solution to address it by tapping into a growing number of talented and entrepreneurial lawyers interested in socially conscious law careers: the Justice Entrepreneurs Project (JEP). A small business incubator that fosters innovation in an inherently conservative field, the JEP brings principles of entrepreneurship and experimentation common in the tech startup community to the problem of access to legal services. In 2017 alone, JEP attorneys helped more than 4,000 low to middle-income clients and they brought in more than $4 million in revenue in the process.

As noted on its website, the Social Innovations Journal chronicles social innovations and enterprises addressing the nation’s most challenging issues surrounding social policy, leadership, human capital, and systems. In collaboration with government, philanthropy, nonprofits and universities, the Journal bridges formal research and real-life experience.